We are developing the social individualist meta-context for the future. From the very serious to the extremely frivolous... lets see what is on the mind of the Samizdata people.
Samizdata, derived from Samizdat /n. - a system of clandestine publication of banned literature in the USSR [Russ.,= self-publishing house]
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Here is an article on how the UK-based artist, Tracy Emin, wants to leave Britain because of the upcoming new 50 per cent top income tax rate. It kicks in by the start of next April and once changes to pension and national insurance are taken into account, the effective marginal rate is nearer to 65 per cent. The tax will be on annual earnings of 150,000 pounds and above. That sounds a huge salary to someone like yours truly, but the sort of entrepreneur we need to fuel an economic recovery is likely to make that sort of money if things go well. A marginal bite of 65 per cent is likely to force such entrepreneurs to cut back on the necessary risk-taking that such ventures require. And as the article I linked to suggests, the additional revenue that officials claim will be raised will be just 2.5 billion quid – and arguably, the disincentive effect of the tax hike will reduce revenues. And never mind just the utilitarian arguments against steeply progressive taxes. As FA Hayek memorably put it in the Constitution of Liberty, there is no objective rule that would allow anyone to decide why a person who earns, say, X per cent more than the median income should pay, for example, 50 per cent on earnings, or 60 per cent, 70 per cent, or whatever. One might as well toss a coin. The “principle” of progessivism should be seen for what it is: legalised looting.
It tells you everything you need to know about Britain’s plight that people are now thinking of going to live in France because its taxes are, at least in some respects, lower. Given all the other benefits of living in France, such as the greater land area and fabulous food, the idea of heading south across the English Channel has a lot to recommend it. And I am typing these words in Malta, where the weather is – mostly – miles better than in England, although ironically we had a massive storm on Thursday evening – the same one that has hit southern Italy. But the place is economically quite lively now, judging by the sheer racket from the construction sites everywhere.
Oh, by the way, my blogging activity has been slack these past few days but I have the excuse of having done my PADI scuba course, which was successful. We haven’t yet worked out how to blog under water. Not even scuba enthusiast and internet maestro Glenn Reynolds seems able to do that.
Irish votes… the finest European money can buy.
It is entertaining to see how brave and resolute Dave is already setting up his wiggle room for refusing to give Britain the referendum it overwhelmingly demands.
David Cameron seems determined to not miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity…
The Conservative leader also gave an interview to the Spectator magazine in which he said he would use the conference to show his party had “the grit and determination to turn the whole country around”.
But in terms of the deficit, he added: “I want to be realistic – both for what a government can achieve, but also realistic in terms of taking the country with me.” Labour has said it plans to introduce a 50p rate of tax for the highest earners – a policy Mr Cameron said he would honour.
Nevertheless, he told the Spectator he thought high marginal tax rates were “a fantastically bad idea” and if the 50p policy ultimately drove Britain’s rich to move overseas, “clearly it would be painless and advantageous to get rid of it at an early stage”.
If it is “a fantastically bad idea” then with Labour reeling around like a punch drunk boxer, why oh why not just say “Britain… are you fucked enough to be paying attention now? We are going in the WRONG DIRECTION… we will immediately repeal this tax and simply tear up every single page the fantastically bad socially and economically toxic legislation enacted over the past decade, and try to restart civil society before it completely flatlines”…
…but no…
Instead we get the usual timid drivel about being “realistic”. Why? Well it is obvious. When it comes down to it, it is really only the details that Cameron disagrees with, the basic notion of a vast profligate regulatory state is only bad when it does not have Cameron’s “safe pair of hands” (or some such similar nauseating Tory form of words) on the wheel of state.
Here is another article which puts some more meat on the rumourous bones.
Bangalore: Water on the moon could be just the proverbial “tip of the iceberg” that India’s very own Chandrayaan-1 has discovered. According to scientists involved closely with the project, instruments on the spacecraft have for the first time found strong indications of “indigenous” ice formations on the moon surface and sub-surface.
I can hardly wait to sit back at the Lunar Bigelow and sip my Lunar Margarita.
This morning, my twitter network delivered a bit of a red herring argument due to lack of differentiation between the internet and the web. So it helps to say first what is internet and what is web (these are not proper official definitions but will have to do for the purposes of this post):
The internet is a set of open protocols that have given rise to a specific type of network – a heterarchy. By heterarchy, in this case, I mean a network of elements in which each element shares the same “horizontal” position of power and authority, each playing a theoretically equal role.
The wikipedia article also points out that heterarchies can contain hierarchical elements and DNS is an example. But an (infra-)structural heterarchy such as the internet ultimately undermines hierarchies. I often paraphrase what John Gilmore famously said: The Internet interprets censorship as damage and routes around it – replacing censorship with control.
This feature of a heterarchical network:
…no one way of dividing a heterarchical system can ever be a totalizing or all-encompassing view of the system, each division is clearly partial, and in many cases, a partial division leads us, as perceivers, to a feeling of contradiction that invites a new way of dividing things.
– is the internet’s greatest advantage. Built into the fabric of the internet is the ability to bypass missing or ‘damaged’ nodes and so imposition of hierarchical structures is incompatible in the long run – such control is perceived as an obstacle and therefore damage*. → Continue reading: A tangled web of differentiations
“She’s a communist. A real one.”
Some thirty years ago I, then a bookish sixth former, attended a week long “Introduction to Philosophy” course at London University. One of the tutors was a commie. She was quite pleasant, introduced us to philosophy more than adequately, but truly, really was an actual no-kidding self-declared communist. First I had ever met.
I and some of the other kids from various different schools on this course found this even more interesting than Logical Positivism and we all tried to get into debate with her about it. Got nowhere, of course. A woman who had been defending the party line in all its various manifestations for decades was more than capable of disposing of the arguments of a bunch of seventeen year olds.
All of us but one – there was one boy who did, just about, make an impression. The tutor had some particular link with East Germany and this boy simply repeated, politely but insistently, several very basic statements about that state. “Nobody is allowed to leave.” “They have a wall and and barbed wire to stop people escaping.” “If you try to escape they shoot you.” And when he said this he sounded honestly astonished that anyone could be – could allow themselves to have become – the sort of person who would sincerely defend East German communism. It was not just wrong but weird. I mean, what? The wall, the shooting people, and she says she likes that?
I am moved to write about a communist I met thirty years ago because the second referendum in Ireland on the Lisbon Treaty will be held tomorrow. The European Union is not remotely as bad as Communism. But there are some very basic things wrong with it and this referendum has brought them out. The European Union will not accept a vote against it. It will not allow a vote at all, if it can get away with it. If people do vote against something the EU wants it makes them vote again and again, knowing that the donors and volunteers for the opposing side will be exhausted eventually, as will the voters, whereas its side has bottomless coffers and power to keep on pushing till it gets its way. The European Union lies to get what it wants. The Lisbon treaty is the rejected Constitution under another name. The Lisbon Treaty is deliberately written in confusing language so as to hide what it means. That is what con-men do. The Lisbon Treaty is a con.
I think that anyone who has allowed themselves to become the sort of person who would sincerely defend these lies and abuses of democracy should be regarded as a weirdo. Amazing, and not in a good way. Yeah, sure, people might be bribed or bullied or bored into doing what the EU wants – all these I can understand, if not admire. But the “neverendums”, the Constitution written like the small print of a dodgy timeshare agreement – you say you like that? I mean, what?
Of course my view as to how such people should be regarded counts about as much as a “no” vote three referenda ago. What is more to the point is that I am almost sure that in Britain at least, my “should” has become, or is in the process of becoming, an “is”. At some point during the Lisbon treaty saga normal people in Britain became embarrassed to actively like the EU. This does not mean that they cannot be bullied or bribed or bored into going along with it, as the Irish will be tomorrow, if the polls are to be believed. But when did you last meet a person who passionately and proudly supported the EU? And what were they, some sort of weirdo?
An unusual little back page story…
When they forced their way into Miss Kausar’s home, her father Noor Mohammad refused their demands and was attacked. His daughter was hiding under a bed when she heard him crying as the gunmen thrashed him with sticks. According to police, she ran towards her father’s attacker and struck him with an axe. As he collapsed, she snatched his AK47 and shot him dead. She also shot and wounded another militant as he made his escape.
Sweet. The world needs more people like Rukhsana Kausar.
And an addition ‘bravo’ to all the people across the globe to held up the Mighty Forks and protested the obscene ‘celebrations’ of the sixtieth anniversary of the Chinese Communist Party taking power.
Fight the power.
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Who Are We? The Samizdata people are a bunch of sinister and heavily armed globalist illuminati who seek to infect the entire world with the values of personal liberty and several property. Amongst our many crimes is a sense of humour and the intermittent use of British spelling.
We are also a varied group made up of social individualists, classical liberals, whigs, libertarians, extropians, futurists, ‘Porcupines’, Karl Popper fetishists, recovering neo-conservatives, crazed Ayn Rand worshipers, over-caffeinated Virginia Postrel devotees, witty Frédéric Bastiat wannabes, cypherpunks, minarchists, kritarchists and wild-eyed anarcho-capitalists from Britain, North America, Australia and Europe.
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